2019 EIS Plenary Speakers

We are excited to announce our 2019 EIS Plenary Speakers:

Dr. Angert joined the faculty at University of British Columbia in 2012. Previously she was an assistant professor at Colorado State University, completed two years of postdoctoral research at the University of Arizona, and attended graduate school at the University of Washington and Michigan State University. Research in the Angert Lab lies at the interface of ecology and evolutionary biology. Much of our research focuses on the evolutionary ecology of species’ geographic distributions, asking what limits adaptation at the edges of species’ ranges, why closely related species vary by orders of magnitude in range size, and how ranges are likely to shift in response to climatic changes. Another line of inquiry focuses on population and community dynamics and mechanisms of species coexistence. These different projects are united by a focus on mechanisms of, and constraints on, niche evolution and the consequences of divergence in niche properties for patterns of distribution and abundance

Dr. David M. Hillis is the Alfred W. Roark Centennial Professor in Natural Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin, where he studies molecular evolution and biodiversity in the Department of Integrative Biology. He is the Director of UT’s Biodiversity Center, as well as Director of the Dean’s Scholars Program in the College of Natural Sciences.

Hillis is a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellow, and has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in recognition of his work in the field of molecular evolution. His publications include more than 200 scientific research papers on evolution and biodiversity.

Curriculum reform in the biological sciences is another of Hillis’s passions. He served on the National Research Council’s Committee of Biology Education and co-authored that committee’s influential report, BIO2010: Transforming Undergraduate Education for Future Research Biologists. He has also co-authored popular textbooks in biology, including Molecular Systematics, Life: The Science of Biology (now in its 11th edition), and most recently, Principles of Life (now in its 3rd edition).

Dr. Couzin is the Chair of Biodiversity and Collective Behaviour at the University of Konstanz, Germany and Director of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, Department of Collective Behaviour. Previously he was a Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University, and prior to that a Royal Society University Research Fellow in the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, and a Junior Research Fellow in the Sciences at Balliol College, Oxford. His work aims to reveal the fundamental principles that underlie evolved collective behavior, and consequently his research includes the study of a wide range of biological systems, from insect swarms to fish schools and primate groups. In recognition of his research he has been recipient of the Searle Scholar Award in 2008, top 5 most cited papers of the decade in animal behavior research 1999-2010, the Mohammed Dahleh Award in 2009, Popular Science’s “Brilliant 10” Award in 2010, National Geographic Emerging Explorer Award in 2012, the Scientific Medal of the Zoological Society of London in 2013 and named in the Clarivate Analytics (formerly Thompson Reuters) global Highly Cited Researchers list 2018.

Dr. Kubatko is Professor of Statistics and of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology at the Ohio State University (OSU). She received her Ph.D. in Biostatistics from OSU in 1999, and joined the faculty there in 2006, after seven years as Assistant Professor of Statistics at the University of New Mexico. Dr. Kubatko’s other appointments include Adjunct Research Scientist at Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Faculty Affiliate of the Initiative in Population Research at OSU, Faculty Affiliate of the Battelle Center for Mathematical Medicine at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, and Faculty Affiliate for Translational Data Analytics at OSU. She has served as an Associate Editor for Systematic Biology since 2007, as an Associate Editor for Evolution from 2008-2010, and as Theory and Methods Section Editor for BMC Evolutionary Biology since 2016. Her research interests are in statistical genetics, particularly in the inference of phylogenetic trees from nucleotide sequence data. Dr. Kubatko’s recent research in this area is focused around the combination of data at the between- and within-species levels by combining models from phylogenetics and population genetics, particularly the coalescent model. She has also worked on problems involving linkage and QTL analysis, and the analysis of microarray data.

Dr. Tseng joined the University of British Columbia in 2017 and is an Assistant Professor cross-appointed in the Departments of Zoology and Botany. She received her PhD from Indiana University in 2005 in disease ecology and evolution, and was an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow at UBC before taking an extended leave from academics to start and manage the journal Evolutionary Applications. The Tseng lab investigates ecological and evolutionary responses of populations and communities to environmental change and their study systems include phytoplankton, zooplankton, and insects. Ongoing research projects in the lab investigate how thermal evolution at lower trophic levels cascades through aquatic food webs, and how predator-prey and competitive interactions mediate evolutionary adaptation to warming. The Tseng lab also conducts field work on plankton thermal adaptation in remote regions of the Canadian Arctic. At UBC Dr. Tseng teaches an upper level course on insect ecology, and an intermediate level course on the fundamentals of ecology. The lab, with considerable collaboration from undergraduates, is also actively engaged with using natural history collections to examine how insect populations and communities have shifted over the last century in response to climate change.

Dr. Hilborn is a Professor in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, University of Washington specializing in natural resource management and conservation. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in food sustainability, conservation and quantitative population dynamics. He authored several books including “Overfishing: what everyone needs to know” (with Ulrike Hilborn) in 2012, “Quantitative fisheries stock assessment” with Carl Walters in 1992, and “The Ecological Detective: confronting models with data” with Marc Mangel, in 1997 and has published over 300 peer reviewed articles. He has served on the Editorial Boards of numerous journals including 7 years on the Board of Reviewing Editors of Science Magazine. He has received the Volvo Environmental Prize, the American Fisheries Societies Award of Excellence, The Ecological Society of America’s Sustainability Science Award, and the International Fisheries Science Prize. He is a Fellow of the American Fisheries Society, the Washington State Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society of Canada and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

What is EIS?

Texas A&M University’s Ecological Integration Symposium (EIS) is an annual interdisciplinary event that brings together a diverse group of leading scientists and students from the fields of ecology, evolutionary biology, and conservation. The symposium provides an excellent opportunity for both local and visiting students to showcase their work and engage in meaningful dialogue with the invited speakers.

Continuing the tradition of EIS since its inception in 2000, we are a graduate student-run event that is open to the public and free to attend.

The organizing committee is grateful to our sponsors for their support and to the large body of faculty, students and public who have made this event possible.